Cross cultural diversity between western cultures and its impact on educating global engineers

In this global world, today´s engineer is likely to have to work in global international teams with colleagues from other nationalities. The challenge for many engineering curricula is how to include, in a realistic way, this global dimension and increase the student´s awareness of the cultural issues that are encountered. In the Purdue University engineering technology program, an international industry sponsored, multidisciplinary capstone project was created to change attitudes and increase awareness of the challenges engineers will face in global projects. In the international project, half of the team members are students from a non-US university. The global project is carried out using normal internet tools such as email, skype, and blogs. In addition two exchange trips are made with team members traveling to their opposite foreign location. Two projects are underway presently in Germany and Poland with expansion of the program to include France, Finland and Russia in coming years. A gap analysis was done in order to identify what needed to be added to the curriculum for international projects. This analysis was supported by a survey among the students of the participating countries. The Milville-Guzman Universality Diversity Scale (MGUDS-S) survey was selected to investigate what the initial differences might be [1]. This data was used then to develop pedagogical strategies to expand global awareness and ease the execution of multidisciplinary projects. Data using the MGUDS-S survey was collected from several populations from Purdue University, Leibniz University of Hannover, Germany, Gdansk University of Technology in Poland, plus two universities in Russia, Tambov State Technical University and Kazan National Research Technological University. When viewed as a whole population, it appears that this generation of American students is generally not interested in engaging in cross cultural behavior such as festivals, dance, and music. In addition these students do not appear to appreciate the benefits that can be derived from engaging with other cultures. Despite this lack of interest and appreciation, American students are emotionally comfortable with different cultures. Based on these results which are discussed in detail in this paper, pedagogical approaches have been created that address these issues and prepare new engineers to perform well in global teams. These approaches include improved skills in conflict resolution, awareness of closeness issues and development of a strategy to overcome this issue, and content exploring the dimensions of history, music and food.